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BEYOND DUALITY

Sketches of Enlightened Spiritual Teachers of Modern Times

Researched and compiled by:

Dr. Norman Williams Col. K. K. Nair

And Barry Oborne

Production and Copyright text 2004: Norman Williams, 209 Markham St. Armidale, NSW 2350, Australia. Copyright artwork 2004 Alive Creative Design, 175A Brown St. Armidale, NSW 2350, Australia, and Barry Oborne, E.mail: awilliams@northnet.com.au

The profits of this book, after tax, are donated to various charities in Third World Countries.

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CONTENTS

Authors Note 3

Foreword by the Honourable O. Rajagopal 4

Introduction - Perceptions of the World 5

PART - I GREAT MYSTICAL SAINTS. SATGURUS, AVATARS AND ENLIGHTENED SPIRITUAL TEACHERS of the 20th CENTURY 10 Ch. 1 - Sri Ramakrishna and Disciples 10 Ch. 2 - Rama Tirtha 19 Ch. 3 - Bhagawan Nityananda 23 Ch. 4 - Sri Ramana Maharshi 28 Ch. 5 - Jiddu Krishnamurti 38 Ch. 6 - Paramhansa Yogananda 46 Ch. 7 - Sri Anandamayi Ma 51 Ch. 8 - Neem Karoli Baba 59 Ch. 9 - Swami Sivananda 63 Ch. 10 - Swami Chinmayananda and other Swamis 66 Ch. 11 - Bahi Sahib - the Sufi way 68 Ch. 12 - Papaji 75 Ch. 13 - The Dalai Lama 80 Ch. 14 - The Venerable Ajahn Chah 86 Ch. 15 - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj 92 Ch. 16 - Robert Adams 98 Ch. 17 - Satya Sai Baba 104 Ch. 18 - Mother Teresa 111 Ch. 19 - Amma 115

PART - II ENLIGHTENMENT TEACHERS OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM 128 Ch. 20 Ramesh Balsekar 129 Ch. 21 Vijai Shankar 131 Ch. 22 Byron Katie 135 Ch. 23 Eckhart Tolle 138 Ch. 24 Satyam Nadeen 144

APPENDIX I-A COURSE IN MIRACLES-A Synopsis 149

APPENDIX II- SCIENCE AND RELIGION 153

POSTSCRIPT - A SUMMARY 161

BIBLIOGRAPHY 170

COVER: A depiction of the Mahayantra, the Sricakra, a figure of special power symbolic of the Divine Mother who is the Source of all Consciousness and of all phenomena.

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AUTHORS NOTE Many recent religious commentators draw attention to the shocking events that are taking place in the world today. Religions back factions in war, pedophilic priests abound and women are abused in the name of religion. The environment is in dire straits, corporations plunder peoples savings, and even with the wonders of modern technical farming, around one billion people go to sleep hungry every night. Moreover, although a thin veneer of sensitivity has appeared, the results of altercations are no less unpleasant than the brutality of the dark ages. It seems that science, technology and democracy, that were to deliver a world free of hardship, disease and unpleasant things like bugs, is letting us down. So what hope is there for what can be thought of as liberation for mankind? It does not seem that civics or religion can provide the solution to mankinds problems. The religions, for the most part, seem to be much too far removed from their Source, and in civics (and the religions) there is too much thinking, planning, scheming, judging and self-interest for anything they contrive to be effective in providing whatever-it-is that mankind needs to be happy and live in harmony. From whatever angle it is viewed, the problem seems to lie with mankinds level of consciousness and in the egoic thought system that he has developed. And in every case it seems that, in the presence of the seers, the founders of religions (and also many who didnt found religions), a different state of consciousness was engendered; albeit, in most cases, for only very limited periods of time. It was with this in mind that we undertook to look at the lives, actions and teachings of individuals of modern times, who seemed to us to have what the seers of ancient times had. The result is the present book, and we would like to point out that it is not filled with the comments and interpretations of he authors. Rather, it is comprised almost entirely of the sayings of the individuals themselves, and the observations, comments and conclusions of people, still living in many cases, who knew them; or others, were there has been a clear and contiguous lineage. In most cases the places where they lived and taught have been visited, and in the case of the still-living ones, they have, where possible, been visited or even spoken to. The reactions to the book, and we have seen many now, have varied. Most people, at least, have found it interesting. A very few have found it offensive; it did not conform to the mental images they had of one or several of individuals sketched. But with yet others, particularly those whom we feel may have been searching, an extraordinary resonance seem to have come from the words in a manner that can best be described as the generation of a feeling of love. The words of the masters seemed to have had, for them the power to neutralize, for a moment, the overbearing nature of the egoic mind and to reveal something quite pristine. It could be said that everyone, at some point in their lives, comes face to face with the demon of the egoic mind, and that there are enlightened individuals who have realized this Truth so that their words can help dispel the demon. These are some of the things that they have said:

The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unloved - they are Jesus in disguise. Speak kindly to them. Let there be kindness in your voice... Dont only give your care; give your heart as well... The poor give us much more than we give them. Only in heaven will we know just how much we owe them for helping us to love God better - because of them. From: Mother Teresa, Chapter 18.

In our lives we have two possibilities: indulging in the world or going beyond the world... Worldly wisdom, however appealing it seems is only so in a worldly sense. The Buddha taught the practice of letting go. Dont carry anything around... Peace comes from doing this with your whole body and mind... Not clinging any more, or if theres still clinging, it becomes less and less. From: Ajahn Chah, Ch. 14.

Mind is thought existing as subjects and objects. In life the first wave of consciousness is I, then I am, then I am this, I am that, and This belongs to me. Here the mind begins. Now keep quiet, and do not allow any desire to arise from the Source. Just for an instant of time dont give rise to any desire. You will find that you have no-mind and you will see that you are somewhere indescribable, in tremendous happiness. And then you will see who you really are. From: Papaji, Ch. 12.

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My voice is your voice; no powers, kings, devils or gods can withstand it - inevitable is the order of Truth. My head is your head; cut it off and a thousand will grow... I shall shower oceans of love and bathe the world in joy. All societies are mine! Come; for I shall pour out floods of love. Every force is mine, small and great. From: Rama Tirtha, Ch. 2.

Each and every drop of Mothers blood, each and every particle of energy is for her children... The purpose of this body and of Mothers whole life is to serve her children. From: Amma, Ch. 19.

In the strange stillness of that part of the world (the Rishi Valley in India), with the silence undisturbed by the hoot of owls, he woke up to find something totally different and new. This was in no way to be confused with, the gods of religion: Desire cannot possibly reach it, words cannot fathom it, nor can the string of thought wind itself around it. The whole universe is in it, measureless to man... There is only a sense of incredible vastness and immense beauty... It is a world without image, symbol or word, without waves of memory. Love was in the death of every minute and each death was the returning of love. It was not attachment; it had no roots; it flowered without pause and it was a flame which burnt away the borders, the carefully built fences, of ego consciousness. From: J. Krishnamurti, Ch. 5.

She had an experience of a blue flame: It slipped itself into her heart and she looked at it with wonder, It was still, small, a light-blue flame trembling softly, and it had the infinite sweetness of pure love, like an offering of flowers made with gentle hands, the heart full of stillness and wonder and peace. From: Chasm of Fire, See Ch. 11.

In the midst of chaos I know that all is well! No thoughts about it - just a gentle, loving gratitude that is always present. When you were a small child, you heard your God speak to you, and you listened. Then the mind grew strong and dominated your life. (Then), after a lifetime of futile seeking... God comes back into the forefront of your awareness. From: Satyam Nadeen, Ch. 24.

The nameless, formless Reality, the transcendent awareness in which you will become permanently awake, is precisely the same Reality that you have perceived blossoming around you... The perfectly peaceful Absolute is not different from the playful relative universe. From: Ramakrishna, Ch. 1. I opened my eyes and the soft luminosity filtering through the curtains was love itself. Everything was fresh and pristine - as if it had just come into existence. From: Eckhart Tolle, Ch. 23.

All my rage, all my thoughts that had been troubling me, my whole world, was gone. At the same time laughter welled up from within the depths and just poured out. Everything was unrecognizable. It was as if something else had woken up. It opened its eyes. It was looking through Katies eyes. And it was so delighted! It was intoxicated with joy. There was nothing separate, nothing unacceptable to it; everything was its very own self. From: Byron Katie, Chapter 22.

To talk of God only is worthwhile, all else is verily pain and in vain. Sri Anandamayi Ma, 1924 Ch. 7.

May their words help you to find the Truth

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FORWARD

Beyond Duality is a unique book containing biographical sketches of saints living and dead and spiritual teachers of the twentieth century. They hail not only from India, the home of spirituality, but also from other countries. The book contains a fairly detailed life sketch and important teachings of renowned spiritual Masters like Shri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Swami Vivekananda, Rama Tirtha, Ramana Maharshi, Paramahansa Yogananda, Anandamayi Ma, Swami Chinmayananda, famous for his Geetha Jnana Yagnas, the venerable Dalai Lama, Swami Shivananda, Nityananda, Mother Teresa, Bhagawan Sathya Sai Baba and internationally acclaimed Sadguru Mata Amritananda Mayi Devi (AMMA). The readers are introduced to nineteen spiritual Masters and five spiritual Teachers. Fifteen of them come from India.

These Masters come from different backgrounds. It has been said that no saint is similar to the other. This is but natural, for they have come to this world to serve the cause of dharma, from place to place and time to time, as the situation warrants. They have different missions to perform. Yet the basic thrust of their different messages remains the same. Satyam (Truth), Dharmam (Righteousness), Premam (Love) and Seva (Service to others). These eternal principles are universal in nature. These messages are well known; they are preached widely from every pulpit. There are any number of books written enumerating the virtues of these teachings. They are aplenty. Unfortunately for us those who

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are living these principles are very rare to come by. This book, or rather compilation, takes us to meet these great personages. We are indeed lucky that some of those great Masters like Bhagawan Satya Sai Baba and Sadguru Mata Amritanandamayi Devi are still alive to guide Millions of Devotees. They can be approached and we can convince ourselves that the great truths spoken by the realised Masters are still valid and relevant for the future of humanity. Their guidance is sought after by the high and mighty, even to solve their day to day problems.

This book also provides sufficient material for those who are interested in academic pursuits also. I believe that this commendable work will provide enough material to satisfy their thirst for spiritual knowledge and give practical guidelines for those sincere seekers who want to tread the path laid down by the great Masters.

I would like to complement the authors Norman Williams, K. K. Nair and Barry Osborn, who have painstakingly researched and collated the material. I have great pleasure to write the forward for an ennobling work, which should make many sincere seekers find their way to the presence of the spiritual Masters.

O. RAJAGOPAL Former Minister of State for Defense, Parliamentary Affairs and Railways, India.

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Introduction

PERCEPTIONS OF THE WORLD

All your material plans and even great achievements have gone by the wayside. You start to think what is life all about? What is its meaning? Who am I? You have no idea whats going on because no one has ever been able to explain these things to you. So you come to believe that life is just a chance: you were born, you have gone through prevailing conditions and experiences, and you get old and die. But this is not how it is; and there are those who know the Truth, capital T Truth. This book introduces the reader to some of them - some of the great saints, mystics and enlightened spiritual masters of modern times. They tell us that the material world is a dream being experienced by the egoic mind in an illusion of time. The essence of the dream is separateness from God or for those who dont believe in God then from a Supreme Consciousness; and reality is the realization of union with this Entity - then there is unalloyed joy and happiness. Although there has never been any question about this from the point of view of the saints and mystics of the world, whatever their religious background, there are fundamental differences in understanding between the philosophical views of West and East; and they need to be aired before the following sketches can be clearly appreciated. Consider these questions: Is the world of matter, this universe of which we are a part, reality? - Yes says the West; because the world of matter is the only reality the senses and the intellect can perceive. No says Eastern mysticism, because the world of matter, perceived by the senses and cognized by the intellect, is finite and changeable; reality is changeless, infinite and immortal when experienced by the inner man - the Spirit or Atman, or what Buddhism calls Buddha nature. And after all, few would deny that man has a spiritual dimension other than the personality that we know so well; or that the logical intellectual mind frequently comes across imponderables that question perceived reality. One could say that it is an arrogance to assume that only those things that can be understood by the mind are reality. Quantum physics is full of things that cant actually be understood. Is man separate from God? - Yes says the West because God, if such is even given cognisance at all, created the world including man. God is the creator and we are the created. There is duality - God and his creation. No says the East, because God manifested as the universe. God is therefore in the world of matter and the world of matter is in God. Godliness is in everything - and there is only One. Even though the Bible, the bastion of duality in the West, proclaims that God created man in his own image, and Jesus exhorts man to know thyself ... The Kingdom of Heaven is within ... The Father is in me and I am in the Father - these and other sayings do not suggest the same concept of unicity that occurs in the East. Millennia earlier than the period of the Bible, an anonymous Eastern sage made this observation: Tat Tvam Asi: God is the substratum of all existence and I Am That. Changeable matter cannot be real. It can only exist in time, and time is an illusion. This encapsulates the concept of Advaita Vedanta and it is the philosophy and the experience of the individuals considered in this book. It may be said that if the only reality is the material world, then the leaders and the thinkers of the West who proclaim this view, should know all about it and should be able to explain it to the people so that they can live in harmony, but this they have never been able to do. The prevalent worldview of society is simply that there are me and you, mine and yours - and mostly mine; and consequently there is judgment, desire, anger, anxiety, fear and depression - all the emotions of the world.. In modern times, in the developed world, there is an economic engine that drives society and has, like the rest of nature, survival of the fittest as its principal ethic. And it uses greed, exploitation and consumption to

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generate growth and wealth. But although wealth, one could surmise, should diminish fear and increase happiness, it instead gives rise to more fear, confusion and less happiness. In duality there are also ego-created gods who stand separate from man: Please may we prevail against the axes of evil has become our clarion call to these gods. Sadly these gods today predominate in the developed Western world in which most of us believe. And it is the world of the egoic mind, separated from the Creator. Further, it is a world that exists in time, represented by a past of history projected into an imagined future. The past is filled, for the most part, with wars, conquests and conflict - of exploiting, killing, devouring and suffering - and the future is filled with fears and expectations. It has not changed in these attributes from its primal beginnings to the present technological age. On the other hand in societies that subscribe to Eastern philosophies, notwithstanding the fact that they too may follow the ethos of me and mine and may be hell-bent on becoming westernised, we notice that deep within their consciousness there is also an ingrained concept of oneness. Another reality: Notwithstanding the dominant worldview, there really are saints and mystics who have transcended the egoic mind and awakened to see a timeless world of measureless joy and immense beauty, where love flowers with the death of every minute. What they have to say, as will be seen, is not about religion but about the fundamental nature of God and of all creation. There is no duality in it and there is the end of loneliness and separation. Such individuals are beacons to whom we can look for evidence that there is another way than the brutal but sanitized Disney Land world that we know so well. And they can be guides to those ready to find this other reality. This concept was beautifully expressed by just such an enlightened individual, Swami Vivekananda (see Chapter 1), who was probably the first Indian saint, and one of the very few genuine ones, to visit the West. In addressing the founding conference of the World Parliament of Religions in 1893 in Chicago, he said: Each soul is potentially divine. The goal of life is to realize this divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work or worship, or psychic control or philosophy - by one or all of these, and become free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines or dogmas, rituals or books, temples or forms are but secondary details... Religion is not taught as a science of experience. This should not be. There is however a small group of individuals who teach religion from experience. They are called mystics, and these mystics who occur in every religion, speak the same tongue and teach the same truth. This is the real science of religion. As mathematics in every part of the world does not differ so the mystics do not differ. They are all similarly constituted. Their experience is the same, and this becomes law... and the book from which to learn religion is your own heart. So the root of the problems of the world is separation from God and belief in the crazy world dreamed up by the egoic mind. In the developed modern world the belief is so strong that truth is seldom perceived. Instead the modern world is permeated by mindstuff - which has given rise to a serious and dangerous dilemma.

Mindstuff and the dilemma of the modern world It could be said that, above the very small needs necessary for a comfortable survival, the more you have the more unhappy you will be. This is why, in general, people are happier in poor countries than in the satiated developed ones. In the modern world the ego personality is firmly in charge and runs all our governments, cultures, economic systems, academic and religious institutions, wars and conflicts. It is given credence by thinkers, writers, commentators, politicians, economists, and religious pundits, and is believed to be good for society. The ego personality is very much concerned with and focused on the physical body. On one hand it adulates the perfect body and on another it worries continuously about health and appearance. In its separateness from other egoic minds and bodies it becomes a master of judgment, attachment and aversion, and though it forms alliances, which are always temporary and fragile, it (or the alliance) covertly, and sometimes overtly, delights in the others discomforts while abhorring criticism directed at itself. The egos world is driven by the pursuit of personal gratification in the forms of praise, recognition, career fulfillment and so on, over the personal gratification of others; and all these gratifications are eulogized as healthy competition and the pursuit of excellence. The egos world is very popular with mankind. At its lowest level it can be represented by food, drink, sex, shelter, attire, recognition and entertainment. At the middle level it is all these things plus, nice houses and cars, insurance and holidays abroad. At the upper level it is all these plus power and control - and though every intergradation can be seen, all the representations are empowered by what Malcolm Muggeridge called the cold corridors of cash (see Chapter 18). A recent and popular TV program, in referring to its heroes, said that what they were after was: Money, sex and putting down their enemies - like everyone else. But as the egoic mind attempts to generate comfort and pleasure, it is always against a background of uncertainty that ranges from barely subliminal anxiety to hysteria and paranoia. Daily life, with its vicissitudes and unknowns, becomes mostly a grinding task focused on the perceived needs of survival: paying the mortgage, keeping up with the Jones, and all the other ruthless demands of living. If this seems in doubt read the biographies and autobiographies of the rich and famous, and reflect on Emersons conclusion that the majority of men lead lives of quiet desperation. The egoic mind is also the substance of boredom. It needs repeated stimulation, pleasure and entertainment, for virtually its only relief takes place through these temporary gratifications. Further, there are compelling sensual and procreative urges that seek fulfillment almost independently of what we imagine to be our will. Sigmund Freud had plenty to say on these when he initiated the psychoanalytical movement in the early twentieth century. And through all of this there always lurks the fear of death. To serve this latter the ego has projected an externalized infinite deity in the name of

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religion. It seems that almost all of our lives in the modern technological consumer-society world, is an attempt to escape from a consuming sense of isolation that the ego has created. And when there is no sense of true spirituality, the end of life is becoming more and more a slow epicurean crawl towards senile dementia. Medical science and technology, once thought to hold the solution to this problem, are letting us down.

Glimmerings of truth The subtlety of the ego is so well developed that even great thinkers and philosophers are fooled by it. The French writer sometimes thought of as the father of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes, was completely misled when he said: I think therefore I exist. The mind is continuously regaled with an almost endless parade of thoughts which are the products of memory. They can never be new and are always the jaded past parading as the present. A great observer said that everyday life presents only recurring changes with a magnitude that is always much the same. We seem, he said, compelled to a life of acting out an almost diabolical destiny - orchestrated by the egoic mind. Nevertheless, some have perceived this mind for what it is and recognized it as the culprit. The writer Paul Zweig, at a time of transition in his life, began to feel as if he had been chosen for attention by a personal ego demon, whose bizarre humour, he said, had turned his face into a nightmare. In his book Three Journeys - see Bibliography - he wrote: Some recipe of wishes dating from the earliest mixture of my being had created an awful dish. He had, he wrote, intended to be completely happy but something had gone wrong and he began to suspect, to his horror, that the demon was himself : It shadowed me from within... loving when I loved, speaking when I spoke. Every spoonful of my existence went, somehow, into its mouth - and because of it everything went wrong. Food did not feed me, but it; success did not please me, but it; and the creature reclined in the sultriness of my inner existence while I shivered and became thin. The Chinese writer and Nobel Prize winner, Gao Xingjian, makes a similar observation in his book Soul Mountain. He writes, I dont know if you have ever observed this strange thing, the self (the egoic self)... I once looked at a photo of me on the monthly bus ticket I had... At first I thought I had a charming smile; but (then) there was also an anxiety which betrayed acute loneliness and fleeting snatches of terror - certainly not a winner - and there was a bitterness which stifled the common smile of unthinking happiness and doubted that sort of happiness. This was very scary... and I didnt want to go no looking at the photo... The problem is the mind; this is the monster which torments me no end... Arrogance, pride, complacency or anxiety, jealousy and hatred all stem from this. The egoic self is in fact the source of mankinds misery. So, does this unhappy conclusion mean that the self should therefore be killed? Is it just vanity? The Buddha said: All the myriad phenomena are vanity, and the absence of phenomena is also vanity. Aldous Huxley concluded that every man and woman, Even the most healthy and well endowed individuals who have made what the jargon of psychology calls an excellent adjustment to life - may suddenly, or gradually with age, arrive at a feeling of damnation that is nothing more nor less than being confronted by ones own sweating ego self: our common consciousness, generally dulled, but sometimes acute and naked, of behaving like the average sensual human beings that we are. And this, the mystics also tell us, stems from our belief that we are the doers, the movers and the shakers of the world; and for the religious, Gods little helpers in a world of judging, rewarding and punishing. But for some, Huxley asserts, the demands of living may yet be superficial to a deep longing for harmony with nature and oneness with life - a need that is seldom perceived and even more seldom realized and satisfied. The pursuit of this wish is what leads us to search for a guide; who, for success, must be someone quite extraordinary, a saint or mystic, who knows how to deal with the mind and the ego and can show the way to the universal truth: This is liberation, this is enlightenment, this is the beatific vision, in which all things are perceived as they are in themselves and not in relation to the craving and abhorring ego.

West and East Western psychology and Western biological and medical science recognize only the egoic mind - and to some degree, little understood, the subconscious. These are considered to be the software and databases of the mind, with the brain being the hardware. Modern psychology, counseling, sociology and so on are largely concerned with the control and treatment of bruised and deranged egoic minds, which is a daunting task - as can be surmised from the low level of success in the treatment of psychological illnesses. The ego is recognized in the West as the unquestioned master of all worldly activities, and psychology describes it as a self regulating principle - something that must be given cognizance and respect. But Sigmund Freud, firmly steeped in fathoming the machinations of the egoic mind, could conceive the possibility of something greater than this when he wrote, If the ego were merely a part of the Id that is modified by the influence of the perceptual system, the representative of the mind in the real external world, we should have a simple state of things to deal with. But after wrestling to comprehend the elemental forces active within our psyche, he concluded in his Lecture No. 35 - A Philosophy of Life - that, Psycho-analysis is not, in my opinion, in a position to create a Weltanschauung of its own. As for scientific thought, he believed: It is still in its infancy, there are many of the great problems with which it has as yet been unable to cope. This is why, to understand anything beyond the egoic mind, we have to turn to Eastern philosophy. The basic elements of Hinduism: Christopher Isherwood in his book Ramakrishna and His Disciples, made a

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gallant effort in summing up the basic elements and terminology of Eastern philosophy. It is paraphrased as follows: Brahman is the ultimate Reality, the Godhead. Brahman, in its role as the Source, is considered to be female (Devi or the Divine Mother) and that which gives birth, even to the gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva - which are therefore subordinate to Brahman and are perishable. When Brahman occurs in manifested, created, objects of the world - such as a human being, it is called the Atman, the Purusha or the Self. Generally, in the sensual world, the Atman becomes deluded as the Jiva, the egoic self, living in duality. The word soul, not used in the East, could be either the Atman (the pure soul) or the Jiva, the deluded personal and perishable soul. Brahman and Atman do not act, they just are. Shakti, maya or prakriti act and do things - they are the power of Brahman. Brahman in association with its power is called Ishwara - God with the attributes of action - similar to the concept of God the Father in association with the Holy Spirit. Christ, in man, is the Atman or the Self. Ishwara, thus, can be considered to be the same as the Christian Trinity. Man (the Jiva soul) can become one with the Atman by the simple recognition of his essential nature. By becoming realized or enlightened he knows he is in union with God. The same is true in Sufism and, though not usually officially condoned, in Christian mysticism. (In Western Christian dogmatics, dreamt up when Rome accepted Christianity, to say one is God is considered to be blasphemy). The three functions of Ishwara are: creation (undertaken by Brahma in association with his power Sarasvati), sustaining (undertaken by Vishnu with his power Lakshmi), and dissolving (undertaken by Shiva with his power Parvati). Other forms of power are Durga and Kali, which are aspects of Devi and therefore may be regarded as the power of powers. Thus, Ishwara creates the universe, sustains it for a while, and then dissolves it - and it is all set in phases of time of which there are specific amounts. These phases are called Yugas and the last before dissolution is Kali Yuga, when things are in decline - as many believe of the world in the present age. Vishnu is believed to have incarnated in Human form a number of times, with Rama and Krishna in Hindu theology being the best-known examples. Jesus and the Buddha are also considered by some to be incarnations of Vishnu, along with many others. In Hinduism such incarnations are given the name Avatar. The mind in Eastern philosophy: Here the mind is perceived to be more complex than that of the simple Western model (a thinking function based on the brain that serves an ego consciousness). In Eastern philosophy the mind is made up of several more psychic elements which may be those relegated to the mysterious subconscious of the West. The lowest of these are the ego and the mind (manas) and its companion the intellect (buddhi). They are concerned very much with the gross physical body, the senses and relationships to the material world. Then there is a subtle body in which reside thoughts and emotions and ancestral likes and dislikes, the vasanas, and cultural tendencies and habits called samsaras. The subtle body persists after physical death and may also be the vehicle of out-of-body experiences during physical life. Much has been written about these things in the transcendental media. The subtle body also has a physiological system comprising nerve channels running roughly in the vicinity of the spine from the coccyx to the crown of the head. The channels are associated with a system are chakras (wheels) placed from the lower abdomen to the heart and throat, and higher yogic plexi between the eyes to the crown of the head. The lowest of these is the Muladhara, located between anus and genitalia. At the base of the spine is the Swadhisthana, then in the region of the navel is the Manipura. At the heart is the Anahata chakra and at the throat the Vushuddi, while in the head are the Ajna chakra behind the eyes and the Sahasra at the crown. These attributes of the subtle body are known to yogis. The kundalini is the dormant psychic energy of the subtle body located beneath the Muladhara that can be awakened through yoga to rise up through the chakras - see Devatma Shakti. The turning of the chakras brings psychic and physical experiences and the perception of deities and other worlds - of which there are several more than the simplistic heaven and hell of Western theology. Acupuncture and some forms of massage are focused on the chakras and the conducting pathways of the subtle body, and the stimulation of the kundalini and the chakras is important in some types of yoga. The psyche also has a supracausal body which is devoid of all thought and where the state of deep sleep resides. It is said to be blissful because within the supracausal body a blissful escape from the egoic mind is experienced. Deep sleep is the closest that worldly-bound individuals get to enlightenment. When we wake up from a bout of deep sleep we forget the experience almost immediately but if we are alert, which mostly we are not, we may be able for a moment to discern a trace of this bliss. Much more often the ego switches in and brings up concerns of the body and the worldly realm. All these psychic elements are associated with sheaths (kosas) that keep them separate and encapsulated. The outermost sheath is the food sheath of the gross physical body which enfolds the sense organs and the organs of action. Beneath this is the vital-air sheath, the prana sheath (pranakosa) which is not only the physical breath but can be said to be that which controls and moderates the whole physiology of the organism. The prana therefore has control over the functioning of the body and an understanding of it is important in yoga for maintaining bodily health and control. Finally there is the innermost sheath known as the bliss sheath, the anandakosa - the sheath of the supracausal body. Through yoga and the yogic powers of certain practitioners and adepts, these psychic elements can be penetrated and explored to some degree. This has been affirmed by the sages of the East and by psychics generally, but the practice of yoga for the attainment of psychic experiences, though popular, is not recommended by enlightened spiritual teachers - because such experiences amount to the opening of a kind of Pandoras Box and can easily bring about physical and

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mental dysfunction. But, it is said, if they occur naturally, or through the agency of a truly enlightened being, they are okay. In the manifest state of human beings, individuals are subject to the gunas (tendencies of behaviour) of which there are three primary ones: tamas (inertia and sloth), rajas (passion and energy) and satvas (spirituality). The Self, the Atman: Over and above the psychic elements, and not generally perceivable by ordinary thought, there exists the higher entity mentioned before - the Atman or the Self. (The soul of Christianity may be the Jiva that is associated with the mind and body and also with the subtle body, although the word Soul, in a higher sense, has also been used for the Self). All the sheaths cover and conceal the Atman, which has been described as Consciousness itself. The Atman is the God-essence in all created objects. All these things have been described and explained by enlightened spiritual teachers. They also explain the concept of karma, the existence of other worlds, rebirth and so on. Such matters are not elaborated further here but one point needs to be mentioned because of a conviction, often smugly adhered to in the West and considered to be very bad, that Hindus and Eastern philosophy in general, supports the worship of idols. Is this a valid and justifiable point of view? The answer may be both yes and no. If the universe is seen as the manifestation of the Absolute, then the worship of anything real (that is, anything not a product of the egoic mind), is the worship of God - such worship will be pristine and holy. In this case idols are nothing more than symbols, as are the statues of saints and virgins, and the crosses, stars, shrines, icons and calligraphy of the Western religions. But in Eastern philosophy, which makes it more realistic than Western theocracy, the symbols are also perceived as something that must go - when enlightenment is attained. So the answer to the above question is also no. The ultimate aim of worship is to become free of worship and attain the Self - which is to love God. So, one may ask, why did God create us? The answer is simply to love Him - and nothing more than this is necessary.

Celestial experiences, miracles Such happenings are mentioned here because of their importance in supporting belief systems. Actually science has now proved the existence of things that defy Aristotelian logic, that could be called miraculous but this is hardly given credence in the fields of biological and medical science. Worldview of modern times still perceives a mechanistic universe. In contrast to these well entrenched views and even the views of ordinary science, there is incontrovertible evidence of the veracity of miracle-like things, and evidence that they are actually normal. Good writers have expounded these matters in books like The Dancing Wu Li Masters, The Tao of Physics, A New Science of Life and The Self-Aware Universe - see Bibliography, as do the many publications of quantum physics - which also rejects the common understanding of time. See Science and Religion Chapter - Appendix II. But aside from quantum physics there is also well documented anecdotal as well as confirmed evidence of many esoteric phenomena. For example, there are individuals who remember other lives or other worlds. In a phenomenon known as the Charles Bonnet Syndrome, some apparently normal and definitely not deranged people have clear visions of what can only be described as other places and other times : A woman sees cows grazing in a winter field and comments on the cruelty of this to others who see the field as empty; another is followed around by two children in Victorian dress; yet another sees bright flowers growing everywhere she walks (see Hindustani Times of 23 October 2000). Such visions are said to be experienced by literally millions of people. In ordinary medical science, anyone who sees visions or talks with angels is automatically relegated to the nut house; but Colin Wilson, in a comparison between some of the inmates of lunatic asylums and the writings of the mystical philosopher Swedenborg, (who was beyond criticism and the threat of being burned for heresy because of his protection by the Swedish king, and also because he was a solid citizen and civil servant), draws attention to the remarkable and uncanny similarities between the exclamations of certain of the lunatics and those of the great mystical philosopher himself. Add to this the occurrence of visions of the past that have been materially authenticated - see The Book of Time and many other well researched books by Colin Wilson and other authors, and we should be able to see clear evidence of the collapse of linear time and the existence of miracles. But miracles are not necessarily about the parting of the Red Sea and curing cancer, yet they may create a great stir and an outpouring of religious fervour when they occur. It is in the occurrence of such miracles that saints and enlightened individuals come into their own - but usually unintentionally. Miraculous events and spiritually enlightening experiences often occur around such people, sometimes with great regularity and in a way that clears up doubts for many. In common understanding miracles range from healing - the blind see, the lame walk and the dead are raised - to the generation of feelings and changes in spiritual comprehension. If we look at the best known miracles of recent times they have usually been around visions and experiences of the heart. Some children see a vision of the Virgin and are so overwhelmed and entranced by it that others around them can sense their ecstasy, their changes in appearance, behaviour and so on; and then a kind of divine energy comes into play. Pretty soon there are crowds of people enthralled by the vision that they themselves do not even see. The force of this energy then becomes unstoppable and the results are well known. After this, and in the years and decades that follow, miracles of the healing type may occur at the very place where the event first took place. And such miracles of healing, or the happening of other intensely-wished-for events against all odds, seem clearly now to be examples of the individuals own power of creation, and common evidence for the laws of quantum physics. A good example of a highly personal miracle of the heart type and a demonstration of the energy that flows from a saintly being at such times, concerns the great yogi Baba Muktananda - whose ability to impart mystical experiences made

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him popular in the West through the 1970s. The account is given by Paul Zweig in his book Three Journeys - see Bibliography. He (Zweig) is taken, somewhat unwillingly, to meet Baba Muktananda in New York by a friend and is listening as people are introduced and are asking questions or making comments. Zweig wrote, The sorts of questions rubbed me the wrong way; they seemed full of personal melodrama: Sometimes I feel within me... I know in my heart... My cosmic feelings... - and so on. But then a young woman began speaking to Muktananda. She explained that she had lived for several years in India and in a tremulous voice she said that she had a question to ask. Paul Zweig continued: I found myself paying attention suddenly, not so much to what she was saying as to the note of vulnerability in her voice. When she meditated, she said, the experience of silvery light was intense, but then nightmarish forms came between her and the light, and she was frightened. When she lifted her hand, as if to describe the nightmares, it began to shake. Then Suddenly I was shaking too. I felt as if I was rooted to the floor, yet trembling with intense feeling. I had to make an effort not to cry, but it wasnt simply grief, for my body had become buoyant and warm... Even after the hand was tucked away in her lap, and Muktanandas voice had begun to speak, I went on staring while the forms and colours of the room glided before my eyes like paper cut-outs. The words afloat in tears repeated themselves over and over in my mind... I was aware that my mouth was hanging open, yet I couldnt seem to close it... My jaws felt like hinged gates into a cave of tears... And all the while I held my tears in by an effort of subtle attention. The tears seeped into my face anyway, a few at a time. But notwithstanding all the well recorded experiences of miracles and visions of other worlds that seem to entrance us so much, they are just miracles and worlds. They are all dualistic and bound in time, for in them there are always figures interacting with other figures in a succession of events that form a panorama of time. They, the miracles themselves rather than the feelings they generate, do not have anything to do with liberation, for liberation is something yet again.

Enlightened teachers Experiencing reality is not a mental process but involves transcending the egoic mind. A renowned spiritual teacher of modern times, Nisargadatta Maharaj (Chapter 15) said that the liberated see beyond the world, and what occupies the whole field of consciousness of someone bound in the personal world, will be only a speck to an enlightened being, a momentary appearance in consciousness. But can this be explained? Only by negation and analogy. Every positive explanation is from memory and is therefore inapplicable, yet the enlightened state, Nisargadatta explained, is supremely actual and therefore possible and realizable. Historically and since time immemorial there have been gifted individuals who studied, practiced and realized union with the Ultimate - and some have been given credence enough for religions to form around them. But in the West it is often supposed that such beings - saints and so on - if they existed at all, lived only in the ancient past. Most of us are just not comfortable with the idea of modern-day saints and are only prepared to accept saintly beings, who practice austerities and do good works, such as Mother Teresa (Chapter 18) - and only as long as they remain strictly mortal. Sages who have supernatural powers and who, perhaps, lived for hundreds of years are, on the whole, repulsive to Western outlook and have been shunned by great thinkers like Carl Jung and even one of the individuals considered here, Krishnamurti (Chapter 5). Although it may be something of a digression a short account is given here of a modern sage who has lived to a great age. It was recounted by the indomitable guru researcher, Surjan Singh Uban (see The Gurus of India), who was an Indian Army surgeon and wartime hero of the Burma campaign of World War II. He studied gurus and wonder workers for most of his life and one of these was Sri Bawa Hari Das Ji Maharaj. In 1955 Sri Bawa was a forest sage in the Himalayas reputed to be over 150 years old at that time. Surjan Singh, following a long series of unusual events, found himself climbing through the Himalayan jungle in a quest to meet this ancient sage. He writes: The path was rough, uphill and full of tall grass amongst the pine trees, where, I was told, cobras were quite common. The orderly told me, however, that the cobras were harmless and were only there to protect this great yogi. There were panthers also, I presumed, for the same purpose. I had my own doubts about the capability of these wild animals to sift good men from bad; mistaken identity could spell a painful death... Sweating and puffing we arrived at the gate of the yogis beautiful cottage... Whilst the orderly shouted to the guru to come out and open the gate, I was forming a mental picture of a very old man, bent down by age and hardly able to walk. Instead I saw a lean, erect and sprightly figure come quickly up to the gate. ... The yogi appeared rather curt when he asked me the purpose of my visit but after explanation his stern face became kind and charming... Hesitatingly I broached the subject of this yogis guru - who was reputed to be even older. He replied: My guru is over 400 years old and sits in that part of the Himalayas, - pointing a finger to snow covered peaks. He then explained how he had wandered for some twenty years along the coast of the Arabian Gulf and over the Tibetan plateau undergoing austerities and hoping to find his Inner Being, all without any result. After he had become considerably emaciated and had lost all hope of finding his goal, he walked back into India, and settled down in a decrepit old temple. He started singing Gods name and some villagers would bring him milk or rice and join him in his devotional singing. One day a crazy fellow came from nowhere. He had a shoe on one foot and the other was bare. As he entered the temple with one shoe on the whole congregation shouted at him pointing out the sacrilege he was committing by entering the temple with a shoe on. He just laughed and said, which temple are you talking about? The whole world is Gods temple. Anyway, I have come to take your miserable priest, and taking the yogi by the arm and marching him away, he said, I have been sent by my guruji,

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who says you are now fit to take up initiation with him. Accompany me and I will take you there in a moment. Surjan Singh continued contact with Sri Bawa for many years and could see no significant changes in his appearance. He wrote in his book, What I have read in Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda about the legendary Babaji (see Chapter 6), made sense only after I had met Sri Bawa Hari Das. Keys to finding an enlightened spiritual teacher: Generally enlightened spiritual teachers are not to be confused with most of the often pleasant men and women who give lessons in yoga and meditation or preside over ashrams and spiritual centres all over the world. Enlightened individuals have always been quite rare but we should also not assume that those founders of the religions are the only true ones. In religious history there have also been those whose influence was confined to tiny regions and lasted only for a decade or two. But they also had the effect of stimulating spiritual fervour. For example, Aldous Huxley, in his book The Devils of Loudun, gives examples from seventeenth century France that were only locally recognized. He writes of the town of Loudun at the time of the narrative: It had no saints, no man or woman whose mere presence is self-validating proof of a deeper insight into the eternal reality, a closer union with the divine Ground of all being. Not until sixty years later did such a person appear within the city walls. When, after the most harrowing of physical and spiritual adventures, Louise de Tronchay came to work at the hospital of Loudun, she at once became the centre of an intense and eager spiritual life. People of all ages and of every class came flocking to ask her about God. And in another part of France of the same period, a Carmelite nun who had been a disciple of Saint Teresa, wrenched the heart of Jean-Joseph Surin, one of the individuals biographised in The Devils of Loudun. Huxley again writes: He listened spell bound to a voice that talked, in labouring guttural French, of the love of God and the bliss of union, of humility and self-naughting, of the purification of the heart and the emptying of the busy and distracting mind.. Praying one day, he became aware of a supernatural light, a light that seemed to reveal the essential nature of God... The memory of that illumination and the unearthly bliss by which the experience had been accompanied never left him. One of the characteristics of all enlightened individuals is that they exude a feeling of Gods love - not to be confused with connubial love. Paul Zweig, in his book Three Journeys, talks about this form of love - which in the East is called Bhakti. He writes: Most of us would probably agree that love is our ideal emotion, and we would say it a little wistfully, because there have been only a few short times in our lives when we have known, personally, the dislocating power of love. The rest of the time we find it necessary to preserve certain limits: to have affection, to like, to feel tenderness, to love with civility and constraint, expecting the same civility and restraint in the love that others feel for us. The other, more extreme kind of love, we idealize by using only elevated language when we talk about it. We direct it towards beautiful objects, or Jesus whom we visualize with the aid of highly stylised images... Our reverence doesnt require that we change the way we live because the beloved ideal is hopelessly remote from our imperfect existences... Yet this ideal is marked by an almost forgotten trace of an undefined longing which can be overpowering, almost religious in its insinuating attraction. Even a pop tune has the power, sometimes, to make us feel like exiles wandering about in an empty world... We listen to the song and for a minute the ideal isnt rose-colored any more. It sinks its teeth into us like something hungry that would break apart our lives if we let it. And all the great legends of love and death mutter and turn over in our psyches... To experience the great dislocating power of Bhakti, we must come before the true saints and gurus with humility and have our pressing minds put into neutral. So whatever criteria are used in discerning the enlightened from those still bound in egoic delusion, the presence of a feeling of the dislocating power of love must be the most reliable, for :

Though they may speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, they are as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

It is definitely not about what religion is followed. Religion is nothing more than the medium of spiritual practice for people from different cultures. Mother Teresa said:

There is only one god and everyone should be seen as equal before God We should help a Hindu to be a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim and a Catholic a better Catholic

No enlightened teacher will ever tell you to change your religion; Rather he or she will tell you to:

FIND OUT WHO YOU REALLY ARE

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PART - I

GREAT MYSTICAL SAINTS, AVATARS AND SATGURUS - & ENLIGHTENED SPIRITUAL

TEACHERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

A NOTE BY A. E. DAGNINO Seeker, Writer, Artist - Venezuela

As a spiritual seeker who has been coming to India since 1964, and has had the good fortune to meet eight of the great Masters whos life and teachings form the substance of this wonderfully compassionate book: Sri Mata Anandamayi Ma, J. Krishnamurti, Vimala Thakar, Swami Muktananda, Neem Karoli Baba, Papaji, Sri Satya Sai Baba, and Sri Mata Amritanandamayi; I want to give testimony of the authenticity in which their biographies and teachings have been presented, and to recommend it highly to students of the philosophy and practice of Non Duality.

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Chapter 1 RAMAKRISHNA AND DISCIPLES

With the blue mountain for her ink, With a branch of the heaven tree for her pen,

With the earth for her writing leaf, Let the goddess Sarada describe your greatness,

She could not - though she wrote for ever. Oh great lord God, Ramakrishna cried:

How can I tell them of your glory?1

Background Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa was one of Indias greatest mystical saints of recent times. Although himself almost illiterate, his influence was so powerful that it left behind several generations of disciples who established and continue to operate the highly regarded and internationally recognized Ramakrishna Order of Monks and the Ramakrishna Mission and Institute, which have centres in many parts of the world. Both have their headquarters in Calcutta close to the temple where Ramakrishna served as a priest. The Ramakrishna Order of Monks is a residence and a training facility for monks and visitors belonging to the worldwide Vedanta Societies. The Ramakrishna Mission, unlike the Order - which has a purely spiritual function - is largely devoted to philanthropic and cultural activities in India and elsewhere. Ramakrishna was born of a poor Brahmin family in a small village in West Bengal in 1836. His father was a village pundit (religious teacher) and the young Ramakrishna showed spiritual leanings from an early age. His first significant mystical experience came to him when he was seven. It occurred just before a heavy tropical storm when the sky was filled with bruised and brooding blue-black clouds. Suddenly he saw a flight of pure white cranes, stark against the looming background. He was stunned by the beauty of the sight and fell into a mystical trance in which he lay unconscious for several hours. From that time onwards, and even to the end of his life, he remained precariously poised between normal and trance-like states. At the age of nine, while appearing as Shiva in a school play, he was carried away by the exalted role and fell into an ecstatic, God-enraptured state for three days. The school play was cancelled. Later Ramakrishna trained as a Brahmin priest and at the age of twenty, because it was proving difficult to get a more experienced incumbent, he was appointed to the position of chief priest in a newly constructed Kali temple at

1 From the Mahimna Stotra.

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Dakshineswar, on the banks of the Ganges River in Calcutta. His worship now became centred on the image of Kali in the temple. It took the form of intense desire to receive visions of the Divine Mother, and also of Krishna. In these God-intoxicated states he would dance naked at night in a nearby burial site and beat his head on the ground, weeping in his longing for union with the Mother of the Universe. Later that transformation occurred and during these bhavas (identifications with deities) he would decorate his own body with flowers and sandalwood paste as his attention to the Kali idol in the temple waned. But the bhavas were pursued with such intense devotion that they alarmed the temple authorities who relieved him, temporarily, of his duties. Also concerned about his excessive zeal and believing that marriage would help him to settle down, his parents agreed to a marriage contract that the son had proposed. (He was after all an official Brahmin priest). But then they discovered the bride was just three years old - so that many years passed before she moved into the temple. The marriage was never consummated but later the wife came to be called Sarada Devi, a subject of intense devotion herself. For many years Ramakrishna worshipped her as an incarnation of the Divine Mother, as did the disciples that followed - see later.

Following the marriage he was allowed to return to the Dakshineswar temple where he continued, though in a somewhat abated form, to experience God-intoxicated raptures. Any reference to God could send him into the trance-like state of samadhi, and because of this he was regarded with some measure of contempt by many of the temple servants. Another of his bhavas was to the God Rama and to attract him he took the part of Ramas favourite general of the Ramayana, the monkey-god Hanuman. Then he went through a period of longing for Krishna and would dress as a woman to attract the deity. His appearance was so woman-like that it was said to convince the closest observers. At This period of his life he was often regarded as strange indeed and this, along with accusations of debauchery, became a means of denigration by some and a license for holier-than-thou forms of criticism to arise. It seems that sometimes, when he saw drunkards, he would go into the street and dance with them - because the sight of their reeling made him think of the way holy men sometimes reel about in apparent drunken ecstasy. He had a friend who was a well known dramatist of those times, G. C. Ghosh, with whom he sometimes danced when Ghosh was drunk and called at the temple after escapades of debauchery. Unquestionably however, as witnessed by his closest disciples, some of whom became enlightened masters themselves, Ramakrishna was neither a drunkard nor sexually active and remained celibate and temperate throughout his entire life. In the confines of temple life it would have been impossible to conceal clandestine activities. For example, as recorded by Christopher Isherwood, one of the young disciples (Jagendra Nath Choudhary, who became Swami Yogananda and was one of six disciples whom Ramakrishna referred to as ishwarakotis free from Karma, who would allow themselves to be reincarnated to serve mankind), thinking that the master was paying a secret visit to his wife, spied on him. Later Ramakrishna appeared from the opposite direction but commented that the spying was correct action: You should check your Guru by watching day and night, He said. His nature was such that he simply could see no fault; but that he did not know what was going on was not the case. On one occasion Ghosh called late at night in a high state of inebriation. He had left a bottle of wine in the carriage, but Ramakrishna, somehow knowing this, had sent one of the servants to fetch it and insisted that his visitor drink it all up after which he was fairly sick and no doubt experienced the folly of over indulgence. During this early period, long before he began to draw a following of well-educated disciples, he learned tantric forms of yoga, and eventually under the tutelage of a Naga sadhu, Tota Puri, he was taught to meditate on the Formless Absolute - which involved mentally decapitating his favourite deity, Kali. Tota Puri also, with full knowledge of his marriage, initiated him into sanyas (monkhood). And then, from being a wandering mendicant who had never spent more than a few days in any one place, Tota Puri stayed at the temple as Ramakrishnas devotee - the master became the disciple. After this Ramakrishna spent six months in the state known to yogis as nirvikalpa samadhi - in total union with God and completely oblivious to the world. He had to be fed and tended by others. Eventually he came down to earth. He had by that time lost all traces of individual identity and was totally free of ego. He spent the rest of his life completely immersed in the knowledge that the world and its phenomena were simply, as he put it, Waves emanating from the Cosmic Mind. He said: When I think of the Supreme Being as inactive, neither creating nor destroying, I call him Brahman or Purusha, the impersonal God. When I think of him as active, creating or destroying, I call him Shakti or Prakriti, the personal God. But the distinction does not mean a difference; both are the same Being - as milk and whiteness are the same, as the serpent and its undulations are the same. It is impossible to conceive one without the other. At this time he was around 25 years old and still regarded as a fool by some of the temple servants. But then another wandering aesthetic, a female monk known as the Bhairavi, came to the temple. She was a woman of extremely strong character and striking beauty, who immediately recognized Ramakrishna as divine. She claimed that he had to be an Avatar (a direct incarnation of God) because there are nineteen kinds of spiritual mood, and these can only be combined in an Avatar. Ramakrishna had demonstrated all these moods. She called for a conference famous pundits - well known for their strong opinions - and, after some debate, these had to agree that he did, indeed, have all the attributes of an Avatar. Ramakrishna took it all calmly and said, So they think that! Well, anyway, Im glad its not a disease. From that time on he was taken more seriously, and later again, over the last few years of his life, he began training the mostly well-educated young men from good families, who, entranced by his mere presence, gathered around him. They would carry the Ramakrishna teachings to the world.

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Teachings Ramakrishnas verbal teachings, for the most part, took the form of sayings and stories in response to events and circumstances as they occurred in the dharma of life, and they resulted in numerous parables. He taught by direct statement based on the most supreme spiritual authority, and by the demonstration of samadhi and his state of God-intoxication, his joy and his song and dance. Collections of his sayings have been printed and are available from the Ramakrishna Missions. Probably the most important record is The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, which is based on a diary kept by a disciple, Mahendra Das Gupta, who became the Master Mahasaya - see further on. Another, The Life of Sri Ramakrishna, is an account of a French writer of that time, Romain Rolland - who tried to relate Ramakrishnas sayings to those of Jesus. Ramakrishna did not set out to form a new religion but was one the first masters of modern times to be responsible for what could be called a renaissance and reform of the ancient philosophy of Vedanta. Although he was in no way scholarly, his innate wisdom attracted some of the most highly regarded scholars of India. These are some examples of his many recorded teachings: His comment made to a sadhu who came to him for instruction, encapsulates his views and demonstrates his exalted state of awareness. He said: The nameless, formless Reality, the transcendent awareness in which you are now permanently awake, is precisely the same Reality that you have perceived blossoming around you... The perfectly peaceful Absolute is not different from the playful relative universe. With regard to the playful relative universe, he said that the world always has to have trouble makers: Otherwise the plot doesnt thicken - then theres no fun. This is one of the most striking examples that can be found of the difference in the way the world is seen by the enlightened, compared to the judging worldly-bound. Nevertheless, he also considered matters of the world to be obstacles to liberation. One of the greatest obstacles to progress towards attainment of the higher vision was, he said: The aggregate of the lustful and voluptuous sensations associated with the sexual act. But notwithstanding this view of sex he was neither a sexist nor a bigot. Ramakrishna revered all women, of whatever type, as incarnations of the Divine Mother. As explained, his own wife, Sarada Devi, was also worshipped as the Divine Mother. And after the death of Ramakrishna she became a leading figure for devotion within the Ramakrishna Mission and Order. He did discourage his young and unmarried disciples from womanizing. He would say, I dont know what people see in women, they are just meat and bone and fat. He maintained that if a young person, of whatever sex or sexual proclivity, maintains absolute continence for 12 years, the mind will certainly become open to the knowledge of God. But Ramakrishna had no illusions about human nature and refrained from indulging in judgment. One parable is wonderfully illustrative of this point of view: Two friends were walking past a place where the word of God was being preached. One said, I must go and hear this sermon and join the pious congregation in the worship of God. But from across the road came the sounds of revelry and the second friend said, I think I prefer to join the merrymakers and flirt with the dancing girls over there. The two friends parted company, one to enter the temple, the other to sport with the revelers. In a short while the one who had chosen the house of pleasure tired of his amusement and was struck by the folly of what was taking place around him. He said to himself, What am I doing, why have I come here when I could have joined my companion in hearkening to the word of God? Across the road his companion, bored with the monotonous drone of the preacher, said to himself, I wish I had joined my companion in his fun instead of listening to this rigmarole. Which of these two, the sage might well ask, was the better man? Or were they not both the same person? Two beings that dwell in each one of us. Ramakrishna recognized four classes of men: The ever free (like Vivekananda) who are in the world for the good of others, to serve and teach the truth. Then there are the liberated, like the mahatmas, who are not entangled in the world: seeking women and gold, - and are always meditating on the lotus feet of God. Thirdly there are the seekers who want to be liberated - some will succeed and some will not. Finally, there are the majority of men, who are in bondage and stuck in the world. They never think of God and are full of lust, greed and gossip. What should a seeker do? Ramakrishna said that from time to time he should seek the company of holy men, seek solitude and meditate on God; use discrimination and pray for devotion and faith; faith is everything - there is nothing greater. On being asked how long a devotee should perform the rituals of worship, he said, When you shed tears, and your hair stands on end when you utter the name of God, then you will know you no longer need to perform rituals - and the rituals will drop away from you themselves. Then it is enough to just say the name of God, or just the word Om. Ritualistic worship becomes merged in the sacred Gayatri mantra; and then Gayatri becomes merged in Om. To those who were married, like Mahendra Das Gupta, he would say attend to your duties. Wife, father, mother, children - live with them and serve them, but know in your heart of hearts that they are not your own: If you are in family life without having cultivated love for God, you will get more and more entangled and will be unable to withstand dangers, grief and sorrows; if you have not acquired dispassion, knowledge and devotion. In the world, the only thoughts are of lust and greed. Ramakrishna was fond of practical jokes and was skilled at imitating others in a humorous manner. He would sometimes parody the arrogant British by strutting around and uttering fruity English-sounding words and syllables. But he was always gentle and filled with love and humour and without aggression. He believed in being assertive only when necessary, without doing harm to anyone. This view was illustrated in a story, thus: There was a dangerous cobra that lived in a field so that herdsmen would never go there. One day a holy man passed

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through the field but as the snake approached he put a spell on it so that it was unable to attack. Then he said to the snake, I will give you a mantra and from now on you will not attack any creature. And the holy man passed on his way. But soon the herdsmen learned that the snake was now harmless and they threw stones at it and beat it badly. The snake crawled into a hole and nearly died. Some time later the holy man passed by again and on seeing the poor condition of the snake, asked, Whats wrong with you, you look terrible? The snake explained and the holy man said, You were very foolish, I told you not to bite people, I didnt say not to hiss. His indifference to the forms of worship: To illustrate the egalitarian nature of his beliefs he would say: Greeting to the Jnani; Greeting at the feet of the Bhakta - to the devout who believe in the formless, and to the devout who believe in the God of form. Greeting to the men of old who knew Brahman! And greeting to the moderns who knows the truth. He would maintain that there is sometimes a need for images, even if made of clay: God himself has arranged many ways of worship to suit the varied temperaments of his worshipers in their different stages of growth. But Ramakrishna was convinced that, on the spiritual path, personal experience was much more important than spiritual instruction or practices based on extreme forms of tapasya (spiritual burning and austerities) - because the state of liberation is several times removed from the phenomenal world which surrounds us and cannot be comprehended, except by experience. To illustrate this he told a tale of a blind man who wanted to know what milk looked like. One person said, White like a crane. What is a crane? He asked, and another said, Like a sickle. And then he was told that a sickle was like a bent arm. Finally the blind man came to a conclusion: Ah, he said, Milk is white like a bent arm. He had little time for extreme forms of asceticism and said, If twenty years of asceticism merely enables you to walk on water, better pay a boatman and save your effort. Further, he paid little heed to theoretical matters and the dogmas of different creeds. To him religion was a living experience and he was convinced that the actual participation in the practices of other faiths (than Hinduism) - and particularly Christianity, was also a part of experience and a means of understanding God. His main form of teaching to the many disciples and devotees that gathered around him was, like that of all great beings, by the infusion of his grace - simply by being in his presence they acquired grace and some of them went on to become enlightened masters in their own rights. It was these two phenomena that most influenced his disciples; the experience of his presence, and the philosophy of the universality of religion. And it was these characteristics that led to the eventual recognition of Ramakrishna throughout the world as one of the great saints of modern times. The spread of Sanatana Dharma, the universality of religion, was further advanced, and continues to be advanced, through the teachings of swamis of the Ramakrishna Mission.

Last days For more than a year before he passed away it was known that Ramakrishna was suffering from throat cancer, yet, through what must have been terrible pain even to the last day and the last hour he continued with the teaching of the young disciples. During this last year he continued to laugh, to joke and sometimes, in a croaky voice, to sing. Christopher Isherwood writes that one of the attendants formed the opinion that he was not suffering at all: The eyes of the saint regarded the wasting of the body with a kind of calm, secret amusement, as only the horrible disease was only a masquerade. Lex Hixton, in his book Great Swan, writes of the experience of an attending doctor. Ramakrishna, his face literally shining with heavenly joy, would say: Please open your entire being Why feel self-conscious about calling the divine name with total abandon? (The doctor was recalcitrant about this, feeling that it would detract from his professional standing). Hixton writes that it was during this period that he expressed most strongly his conviction that the Divine Mother was the Source of all Consciousness. He said: I experienced the Divine Mother as a young pregnant woman who gave birth to the manifest world, cradled it and nursed it for a while and then began to swallow it. As it entered the dark mouth in the form of a radiant child, it was immediately revealed to be devoid of any substantial and independent existence. The Cosmic Mother then cried in a charming voice: Come delusion, come illusion! The Divine Magician alone is Real! All phenomena, including Divine Forms, are sheer transparency. Theres nothing to hold on to, here of anywhere. Even to his last day and his last hour he continued with the teaching of the young disciples. Two days before his death he said, He who was Rama and he who was Krishna, is now Ramakrishna - in the body lying here... Not in the Vedantic sense and not in the sense of the Absolute, but in the sense of reincarnation of a Bodhisattva. Just before his death his skin took on an extraordinary lustre. He placed his hand upon his heart and said, All phenomena emanate from here. The disciples were to spread the message of the universality of God through the world. So to the last hour he spoke to them on this matter, and to others he said again and again, Take care of these boys. On the last day, after listening to devotional songs, the master began to shudder and the hairs on his body stood on end. Tears of joy flowed from his eyes. They seemed to be seeing some beatific vision for there was an enraptured smile on his lips. Then in a ringing voice he cried three times the name of his beloved Kali, and lay back in silence, surrounded by the disciples. A doctor felt for the pulse and said that it had stopped. But then, after some time, a tremulous vibration seemed to run through the body and at this the hairs on the heads of the assembled disciples stood on end. Simultaneously, as if prompted by a higher power, they cried Jai Ramakrishna - it was the mahasamadhi of a truly great being. Ramakrishna had trained a band of young intellectuals, agnostics, and rebels against the established order of the

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day, to comprehend the truth of God. Most had belonged to the Brahmo Samraj Sect that opposed the worship of idols. At the same time some, like Vivekananda, were against the concept of Advaita, that everything could lay claim to the name of God. In the end, by the time they began their various missions, they were all alloyed into the belief of not limiting God in any way at all.

Some major disciples Of the young monks Vivekananda and Brahmananda were the most pivotal in establishing the Order, and Ramakrishna had spent much of his time during his last year training them. He had great love for Vivekananda saying that he was a reincarnation of Narayana (Vishnu). At one point Vivekananda was tormented by the existence of evil in the world; and then one night, in the presence of the master: a screen was lifted - and he saw the perfect harmony between Gods justice and mercy and its relationship to all of creation. From that time on he became totally indifferent to praise or blame in the world. At first Vivekananda was opposed to both idol worship and the notion of everyone being God as in Advaita: Whats this nonsense about I am God, you are God, and anything that is born and dies is God? Ramakrishna answered, You may not be able to accept these truths at present, but is that reason to condemn the great sages who taught them? Why do you try to limit Gods nature? Keep calling to him. He is truth itself. Whatever he reveals to you, believe that to be true. The attitude of accepting God in every form was the key to the success of Vivekanandas presentation of Vedanta philosophy to the first meeting of the World Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893. At this meeting he described the teachings of Ramakrishna on the unity of all religions; that all religions have the same goal and that the teachings of Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammed and others are merely different aspects of one divine Reality. After his death Ramakrishnas teachings were spread widely by his leading disciples who became the first monks of the Ramakrishna Order. There were seventeen young disciples and a number of older lay disciples: Balram Bose and Keshab Sen, and Mahendra Das Gupta and G. K. Ghosh who have already been mentioned, and of course, Sarada Devi. Following the death of the master the young disciples found an old house near the Ganges said to be haunted. It was all that they could afford. Here they enshrined Ramakrishnas bed with his picture upon it and his ashes nearby on a stool. (Some of the ashes had already been deposited at a village house elsewhere but the boys had secreted some to have with them.) They slept on mats on the floor and sometimes went hungry, and they called themselves the dhanas - the ghost companions of Shiva. They would gather together and discuss the teachings of Ramakrishna, Jesus, and other sages and they would sing kirtans long into the night. It was here that they assumed their monastic names, and often Mahendra Das Gupta - the Master Mahasaya to be - would visit and join in their activities. Swami Vivekananda: As part of his mission Vivekananda traveled the length and breadth of India, preaching and visiting holy sites. It was at this time that the Maharaja of Ketri offered sponsorship for his visit to America. On return to Calcutta he became the first head of the Ramakrishna Order and during the following years he traveled widely in the United States and Europe expounding Ramakrishnas vision. He was a sublime lecturer and usually spoke to packed houses. He was also a tireless opponent of the concept of dualism in religion. Almost everyone responded to the deep bell-like voice of this most unusual of human beings - someone who expressed exactly what he meant - the truth of mans essential divinity. He would say: He, for whom you have been weeping and praying in churches and temples, is your own Self. But as leader of the Order, he never forgot that he was a disciple of Ramakrishna and an equal with his fellow monks. This is an example of his teaching: If living by rule alone ensures excellence, if it be virtue to strictly follow the rules, say then who is a greater devotee, a holier saint, than a railway train ? .. The dualist thinks you cannot be moral unless you have a God with an iron rod in His hand, ready to punish you. Suppose a horse had to give us a lecture on morality, one of those cab horses who moves only with the whip. He begins to speak about human beings and says they are very immoral. Why? Because I know they are not whipped regularly.... I hate this world, this dream, this horrible nightmare, we have created with its churches, its fair faces and false hearts, its howling righteousness on the surface and utter hollowness beneath, and, above all, its sanctified shop keeping .. Let the barks of puppies not frighten you - no, not even the thunderbolts of heaven - but stand up and work. Vivekanandas zeal for God and abhorrence of worldly matters is shown by a letter to some of his devotees written in 1894. It said: Stick to God! Who cares what comes to the body or to anything else! Through the pangs of death say - my God, my Love! Thou art here, I see Thee. Thou art with me, I feel Thee. I am Thine, take me. I am not of the worlds but Thine. Leave me not. Do not go for glass beads, leaving the mine of diamonds. This life is a great chance. Why seekest thou the pleasures of the world! He is the fountain of all bliss. Seek for the highest, and you shall reach the highest. His touring and pioneering days ended in 1900 by which time he had become sick and exhausted; but he was much calmer and happier after returning to the math, than during the hectic days. He wrote: I feel the rest of the soul more than the body - the battles lost and won. I have packed my things and await the Great Deliverer. It has been suggested that his death was a predetermined act. Not of desperate suicide but in the way that holy beings are said to be able to decide the time of their deaths. He went to his room on the 4th of July 1902 and after meditating he called a young monk to fan him as he lay on his bed. Some time later his hand trembled and he breathed once very deeply and then lay still with his eyes fixed in apparent ecstasy. After some time it was realized that he had passed from the worldly realm. In his short lifetime Vivekananda became an institution in India and, although never involved in political activities, he had thrust upon him political and ambassadorial status for India - even though the Order steadfastly refused to

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comment on political matters, especially in those early days of the independence struggle. Today his statue stands at the Gateway to India, in Mumbai. He died barely sixteen years after the death of the master, at the age of thirty-nine. Swami Brahmananda: Known as Maharaj, Swami Brahmananda became the second head of the Order and held this position for many years until just before his death in 1923. His character was very different from that of Vivekananda, being quiet and reserved, and he remained in India looking after the young monks and the new disciples. His influence on them was outstanding and helped to carry on the Ramakrishna tradition into its third generation. As a young disciple the gentle yielding boy became the gentle deeply wise Brahmananda, under whose leadership the mission came to maturity. He steadfastly maintained that the first concern of monks must be spirituality, and its success must be judged by the inner state of its members. Isherwood wrote that Maharajs care for others extended far beyond ordinary compassion and was deeply spiritual. He seemed to be in mental communication with everyone in the order and was aware of their unspoken problems, even at long distances when young monks had to go overseas - see the example of Swami Prabhavananda below. It was said that even when members of the Order were being admonished by Brahmananda, they would experience an undercurrent of joy. And he was so utterly fearless that others lost their fear in his presence. He had deeply searching eyes and at times would look strikingly like Ramakrishna. He was not an accomplished speaker but rather inspired by silence - instilling a feeling of peace, and an inclination to meditate, in others. He said: Religion is a most practical thing. It doesnt matter if one believes or not. Its like science. If one performs spiritual disciplines, the result is bound to come, even practicing mechanically - if one persists one will get everything in time. And remember, if you take one step towards God, God will take a hundred steps towards you. And why did God create us? So that we may love him. Brahmananda was immensely fond of music, whether devotional or not, and he said that sound itself, like silence, is God - everything is God. Sarada Devi: For most of her life she was simply in the background - a shy ordinary woman. But after the death of the master, when she was on pilgrimage, she started to become more and more the Holy Mother to the young monks. To call her Mother was not simply an expression of respect, for the young monks began to feel her maternal qualities. Slowly, as she grew older, she came to inhabit a world of her children and was unable to see fault in them. At first she was unwilling to assume a spiritual role as a teacher but she began to be such after a number of visions of Ramakrishna. She began also to help the new and unfolding Order to establish. It came to be that any wish that she expressed was observed instantly. She was considered to be one with the Mother of the Universe and one with Ramakrishna, and she became the de facto head of the Order. In 1920 she began to isolate herself as she experienced recurring fevers and it became clear that her end was near. And when a young monk asked what will become of us? She replied, Why are you afraid? You have seen the Master. Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood: We probably can discern as much or more about a third generation master, Swami Prabhavananda, as we can about the earlier figures, from the sensitive accounts of the British writer Christopher Isherwood. Isherwood became a devotee and disciple of one of these monks, Swami Prabhavananda, and wrote of him in his book My Guru and His Disciple - see Bibliography. Prabhavananda was a disciple of Brahmananda and never met Ramakrishna personally. He intimated that there was a long-standing relationship with Brahmananda and that he may have been a mentor of Brahmananda in an earlier incarnation. When, as a young prospective monk, he first met Brahmananda, the latter said to him, Son, havent I seen you before? And much later, towards the end of his life, Prabhavananda related an incident which may support this belief. He explained it thus: I was sitting cross-legged in front of Maharaj (Brahmananda) with his feet resting on my knees. This was the position in which I often used to massage his feet. Then something happened to me which I cannot explain, though I feel certain that it was at Maharajs doing. I found myself in a condition in which I was talking and talking, forgetting my usual constraint. It seems to me I spoke freely and even eloquently for a long time, but I do not remember what I said. Maharaj listened and said nothing. Then suddenly I returned to normal consciousness and became aware of Maharaj leaning towards me and asking with an amused smile, What did you say? I then realized I was addressing him as tumi (the familiar form of you, used with equals or juniors and friends). I hastened to correct myself, repeating the sentence - I have forgotten what it was - but using apani (the respectful form of you by which we addressed him). After this it occurred to me that this may have been Brahmanandas way of revealing our association from an earlier life in which I was the mentor and Brahmananda the student. In 1923 Swami Brahmananda died and shortly after this Prabhavananda, who was barely thirty, was transferred to the California Mission as an assistant swami. Some time after this he became head of the Southern California Branch until his death in 1976, aged 83. For much of this time, from 1939 onwards, Isherwood was one of his devotees and, to a degree, his disciple - the one of the book title. He has given a detailed account of this relationship which was both as the friend and the mentor of Isherwood. Together they produced an important biography of Ramakrishna and the first generation